Nuns On The Bus get frosty reception in Ohio

The Religion News Service has a story about the reception the Nuns On The Bus (who go ’round and ’round) encountered in Ohio. Not so friendly.

(RNS) The “Nuns on the Bus” have been a consistently popular and effective faith-based tool for religious progressives [Are we just supposed to accept that premise? I wonder how effective they have been. Doubt very much.] this campaign season, but on Monday a group of demonstrators apparently organized by a local Tea Party affiliate met the nuns at a stop in Marietta, Ohio, and provided a far different welcome than the sisters usually receive.

Holding placards with slogans like “Bums on the Bus” and “Romney-Ryan Yes, Fake Nuns No,” the protesters focused their fire on the abortion issue, accusing the sisters of not being sufficiently anti-abortion. [If the sensible shoe fits….]

Someone claiming [?] to be a member of the local “We the People” chapter — that is the name used by some Tea Party affiliates in the region — posted a YouTube video of the counter-demonstrators taken before the half dozen nuns and some 100 supporters arrived. It says there were more than 175 marchers opposing the nuns and it shows the demonstrators praying the rosary and singing hymns before challenging the sisters.

“What could be more innocuous, unless of course the nuns happen to be a group of radical, feminist ideologues whose previous political actions have been so out of step with the teaching of the Catholic Church that they have been condemned by the Vatican,” the YouTube poster wrote in text accompanying the footage. [The Nuns On The Bus have not been “condemned by the Vatican”.]

[…]

The sisters reject that criticism, and one of the nuns on the bus, Sister Monica McGloin (in photo), on Monday told the protesters in Marietta that “we are 100 percent pro-life.” [Are they?]

“As many of your signs are showing, we believe life begins at conception and ends with natural death,” McGloin said in remarks that were transcribed by Faith in Public Life, a liberal advocacy group that has provided media support for the sisters.

[Here it is…] “And that we do not see focusing on one issue, one point of life, as a way that we should proceed. [This is the Bernardin/Cuomo gambit. You can side-line THE social justice issue in favor of a raft of other issues.] And that pro-life for us means that we do concern ourselves with living wage, just wage, access to healthcare, education, food, housing, care for our seniors, Medicare and other kinds of healthcare programs that are supportive. Providing daycare for children so their parents can work…” [The unborn can, apparently, fend for themselves.]

“So we know from talking with people that what the people want is to continue to support the services that are helping us remain healthy, wholesome communities. So that’s what pro-life is.” [Sorry, Sister. That’s not enough.]

we do concern ourselves with living wage, just wage, access to healthcare, education, food, housing, care for our seniors, Medicare and other kinds of healthcare programs that are supportive. Providing daycare for children so their parents can work

If you had a committee arguing on whether or not to kill you, you would have little concern about whether or not they would also provide a just wage.

“Providing daycare so that their parents can work”? More like providing daycare so that mothers can institutionalize their babies and toddlers while chasing after the holy grail of careerism and “self-fulfillment.” Now if they were to talk about reforming the tax code in order to make it easier for women to stay home with their children (as many would prefer but find it difficult with the current tax structure), that would be something. But that would involve conceding policy ground to the likes of Rick Santorum, so I doubt the nuns on the bus would embrace that kind of family-friendly economic policy.

I like how you bolded “pro-life for us means” because that phrase illustrates they hold a different definition of pro-life than the rest of us. Their’s is a personal definition. Therefore she can say they are 100% pro-life and not be lying according to her personal internal dictionary. There it is indeed!

And that we do not see focusing on one issue, one point of life, as a way that we should proceed. And that pro-life for us means that we do concern ourselves with living wage, just wage, access to healthcare, education, food, housing, care for our seniors, Medicare and other kinds of healthcare programs that are supportive. Providing daycare for children so their parents can work…

That’s all well and good – but really – isn’t that what political parties are for? I thought nuns were supposed to serve a different purpose. If the vocation of a nun is really just about political engagement, do they really need canonical status? Wouldn’t they, in fact, be better off without it?

To be fair, some LCWR groups are pro-life, and some are pro-life in a lazy way but pro-left in an active way.

For example, one local order that’s in the LCWR does go to some pro-life events locally. But they send a large group every year to go protest all the way down in Georgia, at what used to be the School of the Americas, and try to get any inquirers to their order to go also. Meanwhile, they never go to any of the big Life marches. This is the sort of order that the LCWR would regard as moderate in its politics and fairly conservative in its Catholicism (and it is, compared to the others in LCWR).

It seems to me that if the Nuns of the Bus thingy is to be successful, they better be able to talk policy, and show that the their economic suggestions are as certainly true as the evil of abortion. I’m expert enough in certain areas to argue intelligently (I hope) that Ryan and Romney are wrong about a couple of things when it comes to the economy (as are Obama/Biden), but in areas where I’m not an expert, I know well enough to shut up. And at any rate, I’m also smart enough to know that I could well be wrong about my own economic opinions, even in the areas of my expertise. Some of things are based on hypotheses (if you want x, you should do y), whereas the monstrous evil of abortion is not an hypothesis but something we can know with certainty. So for these nuns to group an anti-abortion stance together with a particular economic policy plan and call them both ‘pro-life’ is to commit an irresponsible obfuscation. It is to imply that they are just as ‘certain’ about he ‘morality’ of a particular economic and healthcare plan as they are about the evil of abortion. It’s really quite terrible, in that it could potentially confuse young impressionable folks.
It’s a shady slight of hand, and someone should call them on it. Whether or not the Tea Party folks are right themselves when it comes to their economic arguments, I hope they have a couple policy wonks in their midst that creams these nuns in an exchange on economic matters.

In Sunday’s bulletin the SALT committee announced Sr. Simone Campell “from Nuns on the Bus” (and fresh from the DNC) is in town. She will be speaking on public policy issues e.g. more state and federal spending on welfare programs. On the one hand she won’t be speaking on Catholic property but at a Kiwanis club in Northern Virginia. On the other hand, we were also told that our parish could not distribute literature on any candidate in parish or school facilities or host any political events unless we also hosted the opposition. But, I guess the SALT committee met this requirement since it will be off-site. I bristle at this. When, when will the 1970s zeitgeist fizzle? I have to remember to keep praying hard for conversions of minds and hearts.

That’s all well and good – but really – isn’t that what political parties are for?

Interestingly, traditionally we would have made the reverse connection.

Politics, then, was much about bringing the criminal into prison.

Non-contemplative religious service, then, was much about means of existence, access to healthcare, education, food, housing, care for our seniors… so that (amongst other things) (perhaps) less crimes would be committed.

“On her way back to the bus, I asked Sr Simone whether she supported the Fortnight for Freedom. She said something about it being complicated. I asked if she opposed the HHS contraceptive mandate. It’s complicated, she said. NETWORK supported passage of the Affordable Care act, and after the Obama administration made very fake “conscience accommodations” this February, the group stated: “NETWORK applauds today’s announcement about the administration’s accommodation of religious conscience objections to the provision of insurance coverage coverage for contraceptives to women at no cost to them.” As far as I know NETWORK has not expressed any concern since for religious freedom issues the legislation raises.”

I’m afraid that they do represent a non-trivial proportion of “catholics”, they just don’t represent any proportion of Catholics. The problem is that the number of “catholics” is slightly greater than or equal to the number of Catholics in the United States. Just look at the last election and that is pretty plain.
The slight of hand over “pro-life” is a typical leftist ploy. They twist the language to suit their needs. The thing that really bothers me about it is that not only do we let them get away with it, but mostly we (that is both conservatives and orthodox Catholics) let them re-define the words and then we attempt to engage with their agenda using their vocabulary. This is a sure path to philosophical defeat.
Note that no one called sister on her redefinition of “pro-life”. Basically we tried to play their game by insisting on the term “pro-life” rather than ‘anti-abortion” because being “anti” something is meeeeean. Of course the left was grateful, because the term “anti-abortion” doesn’t leave any wiggle room.
For the record I’m also anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-stealing. As well as anti-wealth distribution. I’m a real meanie.

“…we do concern ourselves with living wage, just wage, access to healthcare, education, food, housing, care for our seniors, Medicare and other kinds of healthcare programs that are supportive. ”

And support for government involvement in ALL of those items, without exception, are based on prudential judgments. There are other Catholics who take a different position on these items also based on prudential judgments. But the items they find negotiable are related to actual moral teachings.

Hitler killed Jews for the sake of giving the German people a better economy and better life and the things people wanted. Using the nuns on the Bus’ logic, it was okay to vote for Hitler into office to achieve those things and not focus on that one issue with concern to the treatment of Jews. Only single-minded people would be overtly concerned about that and not look to the good that Hitler did.

I will never understand why people want to force the government to become a charitable organization. If they want day care centers, then start one, and work at it! If they want to feed the hungry, then go to the grocery store! Social justice is the responsibility of people to treat one another justly; it cannot be achieved because the government throws money at it. I wish we would get taxes cut for all of those such ventures and be able to use that money charitably how we want to!

P.S. I’m sure there’s a better way to say what I said, but its Wednesday… And I’m a mom…

I will never understand why people want to force the government to become a charitable organization.

Because the government has the money.

“It’s the taxpayers’ money”, you say? Well – that’s just it. The government has the authority, by traditional theory, and at any rate the possibility to create a morally binding obligation to pay taxes.
On the other hand, all the rest of charitable giving is of free decision. Of generally also morally free decision, if we leave alone that with an amount below a presumably quite low percentage Conscience will have a word to say.
And even if we would, for argument’s sake, suppose conscience and generosity together could bring about as much as can sensibly be taken in taxes adding what then still is given from generosity — still that does make the problem that the he who is conscientious or generous or both gets the worst of it, and that once again “the honest man is the stupid”, as the saying goes. We do not want that.

On the other hand, I believe there is a natural obligation for government not to tax more than they need. And although the word “need” does cover a range wider than suspected and there are greater and lesser needs, it is still “need”, not “would like”, not even “would like and would have really good use for”.

Concerning these needs: I do believe that a nation has the right to, by positive law, enact a system to principally free her members from direst need and use tax money* for it. [*For simplicity’s sake, I’ll count social security fees, especially if given in wage percentages, amongst the taxes.]

Americans, we hear, do not feel so. But interestingly and as an aside, Germans neither feel so as soon as other nations (Greeks, etc.) are concerned. Which is also why when we, also, talk of “looters” (“Sozialschmarotzer”), it must be admitted we have a family of Turkish descent before our eyes which cares nothing about Germany but does want to take its benefits. – From this much neglected (yet recently mentioned in a newspaper article which I read) fact that we do not mind any social security if it goes to fellow Germans but may quite well disapprove of it to go to other nations, I deduce – in spite of all regrettable xenophobia, stereotypes, prejudice it is mingled with it — that this is a trace of a real patriotism.

“Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what you can do for your Church, family, club, profession, science. What the country needs it will collect on its own and without asking. – But you may ask any time (if ready to hear Nothing for an answer) what your country can do for you.” I admit that is way less rhetorical than President Kennedy.

For the same reasons the pro-abortion crowd buys into it. Children are a burden to the careerist woman, and we’ll all be richer without children to look after, and more food and drink and space there is ont eh planet for the rest of us. Or so they’d like to think… but reality is funny sometimes.

Katheryn, what you are proposing is the principle of Subsidiarity which is what the Church has always taught as a basic principle of how society should be organized. Unfortunately Modernism has taken over our society and has crept into the Church. Modernism denies any other authority than the State and therefore provides a top down approach to dealing with these issues. We have seen how well this has worked out in the former Soviet Union, Cuba, plus several European countries that face economic problems as a result. Unfortunately this philosophy took over our Church in the 20th century, although it is now in retreat it is fighting a rearguard action e.g. the LCWR.

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